While I was in America, on my last tour, a woman wrote to me from a town in the state of Maine.  She was a stranger to me when she sat down to write that letter, but I count her now, although I have never seen her, among my very dearest friends.

“I have a friend in France,” she wrote.  “He is there with our American army, and we had a letter from him the other day.  I think you would like to hear what he wrote to us.

“‘I was walking in the gloaming here in France the other evening,’ he wrote.  ’You know, I have always been very fond of that old song of Harry Lauder’s, ‘Roamin’ in the Gloamin’.’

“‘Well, I was roamin’ in the gloamin’ myself, and as I went I hummed that very song, under my breath.  And I came, in my walk to a little cemetery, on a tiny hill.  There were many mounds there and many small white crosses.  About one of them a Union Jack was wrapped so tightly that I could not read the inscription upon it.  And something led me to unfurl that weather-worn flag, so that I could read.  And what do you think?  It was the grave of Harry Lauder’s son, Captain John Lauder, of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders, and his little family crest was upon the cross.

“’I stood there, looking down at that grave, and I said a little prayer, all by myself.  And then I rewound the Union Jack about the cross.  I went over to some ruins nearby, and there I found a red rose growing.  I do believe it was the last rose of summer.  And I took it up, very carefully, roots and all, and carried it over to Captain Lauder’s grave, and planted it there.’”

What a world of comfort those words brought me!

It was about eight o’clock one morning that Captain Lauder was killed, between Courcellete and Poizieres, on the Ancre, in the region that is known as the Somme battlefield.  It was soon after breakfast, and John was going about, seeing to his men.  His company was to be relieved that day, and to go back from the trenches to rest billets, behind the lines.  We had sent our laddie a braw lot of Christmas packages not long before, but he had had them kept at the rest billet, so that he might have the pleasure of opening them when he was out of the trenches, and had a little leisure, even though it made his Christmas presents a wee bit late.

There had been a little mist upon the ground, as, at that damp and chilly season of the year, there nearly always was along the river Ancre.  At that time, on that morning, it was just beginning to rise as the sun grew strong enough to banish it.  I think John trusted too much to the mist, perhaps.  He stepped for just a moment into the open; for just a moment he exposed himself, as he had to do, no doubt, to do his duty.  And a German sniper, watching for just such chances, caught a glimpse of him.  His rifle spoke; its bullet pierced John’s brave and gentle heart.

Tate, John’s body-servant, a man from our own town, was the first to reach him.  Tate was never far from John’s side, and he was heart-broken when he reached him that morning and found that there was nothing he could do for him.